There is nothing worse than watching your trade be up with green pips for a while and see it completely reverse quickly later and take out your stop points lower. Almost all FX traders has experienced this feeling firsthand, and if you didn't consider yourself lucky - it's a woe most traders face more often than you can imagine and is a perfect example of poor money management. The markets can move fast, with gains turning into losses in a matter of minutes, making it critical to properly manage your capital. One of the important rules of trading is to protect your profits - even if it means banking only few pips. Taking multiple trades with few pips at a time, that adds up to a respectable profits, this approach may seem like trading like slowly, but we must remember that the main point of trading is to minimize losses and along with that to make money as often as possible.The most used and easiest way to not let a winner turn into a loser is to trail your stop loss level to breakeven point as soon as you have a good amount of pips (far enough from the entry point to not affect the open position by the market nose). This method can be enhanced by trailing again and again the s…

Introduction:What is the Federal reserves plan? What is Janet Yellen thinking?Ultimately, none of us know... We can try and predict, guess. But at the end of the day she will do what she does and we will have to react. This being said, it doesn't mean we can't have a game plan, and expect certain things. This chart is from DBs Slok, and shows an expected route for the Fed.Thus far, the March 6th print was strong, with Non-Farm payroll change coming in at 295k and last week we saw the word "patient" removed.What was expected was that with "patient" removed, we should see a hike in the coming few months, and with Yellen also saying it won't be the April meeting, then we could only assume the June meeting.Well we saw this, however it was far from the hawkish tone we were expecting, and subsequently we saw quite the move in the USD and US interest rates.The dollar dropped an incredible 5% in just minutes.On top of this, US 2 year yields dropped a huge 14bpsNow looking forward as per Deutsche, they expect the Fed to sit back and monitor the financial markets and data points to see whether or not there will be any irrational fears going into the 1st Hike. No so far there has bee…

Introduction This is a manual of my IIndicator-SentimentInformer which is a kind of SWFX Sentiment Index Viewer. What can this indicator do? It's very simple, all she can do is display the latest SWFX Sentiment Index values on your JForex chart. This is a brief outline of this articles. Firstly, about SWFX Sentiment Index; secondly, How to use; thirdly, Explanations of the Output Values; finally, Explanations of the Option Input Parameters. Chapter 0: What is the SWFX Sentiment Index? Before moving to main chapter, we would like to do a brief explanation of the Sentiment Index. For details of that, you can read in this page of Dukascopy, https://www.dukascopy.com/swiss/english/marketwatch/sentiment/. In summary of above is as below.

1.0 Introduction For some unexplained reason, novice traders sometimes stick to an obviously bad trade and just don’t want to use stop loss. Saving a bad trade is better than losing a trade, but too much believing in your prediction – even if it is turning bad in front of your own eyes – keeps you waiting for something to happen. Save capital, capital is more important than your prediction. Don’t feel ashamed to change your mind about a trade.In this article I will try to give you one practical example of how I changed my mind trading USD/CAD. I built patience and discipline in trading using technical and fundamental analysis.2.0 Fundamental analysisI wanted to trade USD/CAD forex pair in the first week of March.I saw bearish triangle pattern on daily chart and I thought that UCAD/CAD will go down. In the first step I made analysis of Dukascopy Calendar for the first week of March. We can see in Figure 1 that this week had several high important events for USD and CAD currencies.

Figure 1: Dukascopy Economic Calendar - high important USD and CAD events in the first week of March

I tried to make trading plan after BOC Rate Statement. Most important event in the first week of Ma…

“The higher you climb, the more that you see”, these are parts of the lyrics of a song called “the higher you climb” written by Dan Fogelberg. By listening to the song, it can be easily concluded that he is referring to geographical height, but I was impressed when I realized that the phrase also had some trading relevance.During the Roman and Prehistoric times, every army in a battle always struggled to take the higher ground. The reason for this is fairly obvious, higher ground provides a solid advantage over an army below.Success in present day warfare is also heavily dependent on military air strikes; attack from the skies using military planes and jets. Fighter jets from their high altitudes can easily transverse vast areas of land, and attack enemy targets with relatively high precision.This article is not to talk about military strategy or warfare, but rather to discuss how a basic military strategy can be employed in trading. This is more of a top-down approach to trading using higher time frames to establish the market trend, and taking trading decisions based on that information. Just as it is easy to see large areas of land from a mountain top or an aerial view, it i…

Hi your old pal Jock Pippin here back with another tale from Forex land . You might know the story of the 4' O'clock boys,you might not ! .I just want to explain how they did what they did . As to why they did what they did ...Well that's easy.,it's because they thought and still think they are too big to fail and too big to jail .Arrogant,obnoxious bastions of greed . Yes they got their knuckles wrapped . OUCH !! ,and the Banks the traders worked for got fines in the £ Billions(and counting).No lessons were learned and no moral standards attained. Ladies and gentlemen and members of the jury please meet the 4 O'Clock boys.Traders using private chat rooms and calling themselves “the 3 musketeers”, “the players”, “1 dream, 1 team”, “a co-operative” and “the A-team” were uncovered during the regulatory investigation into foreign exchange rigging.Hundreds of pages of documents released by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Commodity Futures and Trading Commission show the way that traders tried to manipulate the crucial foreign exchange price – known as the “4 pm fix” – to make profits.The 4 pm FixThe Forex market is a 24 hour market , it's not easy to see how much …

Picking a very beginning of the next swing is a difficult and often – costly objective for a trader. But these kinds of trades when you catch it and you know that you just caught the major turnaround, gives not only immense profits and an opportunity to induce escape velocity on your capital growth. Such trades give this wonderful feeling of calmness and an opportunity to really enjoy trading for a change from these extreme everyday stresses that it produces.I wrote on this topic a few years ago in my older article “Picking Tops and Bottoms” and I touched several and very different aspects, like: oversold/overbought concept, psychological context and risk management. Now, with greatly increased price action understanding I can approach this topic again, but from a different - technical analysis stand point of view. What exactly should be looked for in this ultimate indicator of financial markets?There are two general principles of price behavior when it comes to major reversals. In a way, these principles are the opposites to each other and both implements the extreme opposite to a sentiment in the market. Yes, that’s a psychological play against the crowd and that is what price …

Traders prefer gold investments, when markets are volatile and dominated by economic or political instability. Economic turbulence has traditionally influenced by the growth in the value of precious metal, as investors assess it's a safe investment. The instability times caused by higher demand and interest in gold, which means an even greater increase in value. These market developments offer great potential for greater earnings opportunities for trade."Gold always become more expensive", concentrate on detail and uncover the gold trade opportunities, and how to actually make a profit from it.

Why traders invest in gold?

For a long time gold for traders are very appropriate financial instrument. This is a high-value product, which is not related to any specific markets, countries or some companies. That's why investors sell gold in order to compensate for thei'r fails, resulting from various economic circumstances.Gold market is the global OTC (over-the-counter) market. New York Mercantile Exchange Comex division and the London Bullion Market Association are the two largest gold trading places in the world. Like any other financial instruments, the g…

Aggressive scalping and tight stoplossAbstract: In this article I will try to explain my methodology of trading, the tools I am using and techniques involved. The main stress will be put on the stoploss, how to us it better and how to continue after being hit. Some basics on the scalping will be explained and how to avoid over trading and overconfidence. Other important factors like forming of channels, wedges and bottoms and tops from patterns will be also given.Basics:Scalping is method for trading in which your target are just several pips, if we are talking about numbers let’s say not more than 10 pips (EUR/USD) or between 2 to 5 pips. This method is widely used because traders hate to stay for a long time in a position and being under stress. Usually in volatile periods this method gives us exit at about seconds to 5-10 minutes maximum.Stoploss is the most discussable factor in trading. All the books tell you that it is very important and you should always put it in your trade. I am sure everybody knows what it is. In 2 words this is the level at which you are prepared to take loss (usually traders put it very, very far from this level and this is the reason everybody are …

The forex market is the largest financial market and can be accessed around the world, but even though there are many forex investors, only a few are really successful. Many traders fail for the same reason the failure in other asset classes. In addition, extreme leverage - the use of borrowed capital (collateral) to increase the potential return on investment - that is provided by the market, and a number of relatively small margin to trade currencies, denying traders the opportunity to make a lot of mistakes at low risk. Factors specific to currency trading can lead to some traders expect a return on investment greater than the market can offer, or to take more risks.Certain errors may keep traders on their investment objectives. The following are some of the common pitfalls that can interfere with the forex trader:1. Not Maintaining Discipline in conducting trade. The biggest mistake that can be made by any trader is to let emotions control trading decisions. Being a successful forex trader means achieving a major victory after a while suffering from a lot of small losses. Experiencing many consecutive losses emotionally disturbing, and can test the patience and confidence of…

Hello Everyone,today i would like to share my experiences with dukascopy contests.First of all,i would like to start with Trader's contest.Trader's contest: - Coming to this contest,i have been participating since very long time but unfortunately i did not won any places in this contest.Analysis on points with Trader's contest ->

Performance Points : - These are points where i am failing i.e i am doing trades badly and at the end losing the capital and i am not even good at protecting the initial capital in almost 99% of contests.i think for winning in contest,the performance points really matter as it is traders contest but coming to what points we need to achieve is 140 points here is enough. For achieving 140 points,i think a 250k balance an average is enough after some observation.So,250k is really not that hard but all you need is consistent trades with profits.

Greetings to all! I want to share the thoughts and rules of Forex trading. I have been trading for 4 years. This occupation did not bring me profit, and I lost a lot of money. I guess I was one of many traders who lose money every day, week, month.... But that's not the point. For four years I studied strategy, trading rules, smart books about trading and Forex, and I studied their own mistakes when trading and his mental state at the time of the transaction and exit.In the course of analytic work in the past 4 years I have come to the following conclusions: 1. One of the objectives of the Forex market is profit individual large banks, funds, financial institutions, by bringing liquidity of funds from small and medium traders and later weaning these tools with the right price movements, which will be executed stop-loss or traders will exit transactions themselves with loss of Deposit. Major players are connected and they share information on open trades or pending orders together and then act accordingly. It is necessary to firmly grasp and always keep in mind. 2. Psychology is a crucial factor in the trade. In Greek language the Psychology - the doctrine of the soul. Trader -…

Financial markets price movement prediction is successful trading basis. And Experienced traders know, that trading the currency market requires not only knowledge of the forex area. Currency price movement depends not only on macroeconomic developments and other economic news, but also from other financial instruments movement.Trader, knowing that the currency with which the market is concerned, can predict some of the forex market movements before they happen. To lead in this game and make more informed trading decisions, you need to carefully monitor the related markets.Stock indices

Stock indices review can provide lots of information about market sentiment, which is very useful to the trader. Market sentiments shows, how comfortable feels market trader. The more you trust it, the more willing to take risks. In general, stock indices upwards when the market sentiment is positive - or, in other words, risk tolerance - and decreases when the mood is negative - or avoid risk.Assessing the market sentiment, traders analyze these stock indices: S & P500, Nasdaq100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average the United States, D…

Back in 2009, when I still believed that FX trading was same as playing street poker, and FX brokers were filthy rich cats with humongous Swiss accounts filled with poor people’s money, I met someone who changed my life. He introduced me to online FX trading. You might think it was a good thing, but I later learnt a hard lesson about so-called “professional” FX traders. He was in my country teaching about how to be stinking rich (like him) through trading currencies. It’s important to learn that his 5-day seminar cost an arm and a leg and most like me who attended forked out large sums of our life savings. But, we were going to be rich like those Swiss cats I mentioned earlier, right? The first day we learnt about trading platforms and ‘fancy’ things like candlesticks – I thought candles were things we use when the lights are out. He was also gracious enough to enter a trade while he was teaching us other things and we would see how easy it was to be rich. After a couple of minutes, this Pro trader showed us that he had made a whopping USD500! This was God like! I started dreaming of yachts and exotic Islands and could not wait to get started. Well, its 2015, I have never been o…

According to my backtest, this strategy has been profitable for at least two years now. The strategy itself is very simple and literally takes less then 5 minutes PER WEEK to execute. If you have been trading for a while, you’ve probably encountered this system in one version or another on forex forums. It’s a simple weekly breakout strategy. After the markets open on Sunday at 23:00 CET (17:00 EST) we wait for the first 4 Hour candle to close. This happens at 3 AM CET on Monday, or 9 PM EST. Since I know I will get this question, if your broker has different 4 Hour settings, just use the hourly chart and draw a breakout box from 23:00 to 03:00.For longs: Place a Buy stop order at the high of the 4 Hour breakout box + 20 pips (+2 pips added for the spread)For shorts: Place a Sell stop order at the low of the 4 Hour candle - 20 pipsRules Here are the rules I used during the backtest. I tried to keep the rules simple and robust to avoid curve-fitting the data. The stoploss is placed at the opposite side of the of the breakout channel. If we are long we exit our trade when price breaks the low of the breakout channel and we simultaneously enter a short trade. But we only take …